Tales of Men and Ghosts

a young man with bright prominent eyes, a smooth but not too smoothly-shaven

ber, are you?" h

s - it

uilding has swallowed

nt of a brick and limestone flat-house that reared its fli

re?" he

opposite Leffler's over there." He pointed across the street to a tumble-down stable with

"Well, that's something - may get a clue there. Leffle

disti

exquisite sense of security. McCarren had fastened on the case at once, "like a leech," as he phrased it - jumped at it, thrilled to it, and settled down to "draw the last drop of fact from it, and had not let go till he had." No one else had treated Granice in that way - even Allonby's detective had not taken a single note. And though a week had elapse

ence and execution it had become a vague place of storage, a hospital for broken-down carriages and carts, presided over by a blear-eyed old

re; I've seen harder jobs done," said M

s sanguine tone: "I'd undertake now to put the thing throu

ut he still hoped to convince McCarren that his case was strong enough without it; an

esides, it'd be no use till I get some fresh stuff to

ey and left Granice gaz

ed at the apartment, a sha

bard says. Can't get a trace of Flood, or of Leffler either. And you

id Granic

ht it, do

Flood - yes, Flood himself. I sold

town for Flood. That kind of business di

scouraged,

McCarren continued, his note-book out

n, a student of medicine whom irremediable ill-health had kept from the practice of his profession, amused his leisure with experiments in physics, for the exercise of which he had set up a simple laboratory. Granice had the habit of dropping in to smoke a cigar with him on Sunday afternoons, and the friends generally sat in Venn's work-shop, at the back of the old family house in Stuyvesant Square. Off this work-shop was the cupboard of supplies, with its row of deadly bo

use in Stuyvesant Square had been turned into a boarding-house, and the shifting life of New York had passed its rapid sponge over every trac

shut his note-book, and throwing back his head, rested

ice - you see the we

despairing motion

Why the deuce do you want this thing known? W

of a cheerful animal life would believe in the craving for death as a sufficient motive; and Granice racked his

the memory of it

eapt at the opening. "That's it - t

ps, eh? Wouldn't let you sleep? The time cam

Can't you u

't suppose there's a human being with a drop of warm blood

ver would accept as a conceivable motive the Irish reporter seized on as the most adequate; and, as he said

s a clue to the psychology of the popular drama; and Granice, perversely, said to himself:

It was becoming necessary to Granice to feel himself an object of pre-occupation, to find himself in another mind. He took a kind of gray penumbral pleasure in riveting McCarren's attention on his case; and to feign the

ain from every physiognomy. Granice listened indulgently. He had lost all interest in his kind, but he knew that he was hims

third row, pulling his moustache? His memoirs would be wort

tective from Allonby's office. For a moment he h

ued. "Know who he is, of course? Dr. John B.

ds in front of him. "That man - the fourth from t

enough to know Stell when I see him. He testifies in

's spine, but he repeated obst

. Look - here he comes. If it is

ly up the aisle. As he neared McCarren

the reporter cheerfully flung out at him. And Mr. J.

see him: a physician disguised as a detective. Allonby, then, had thought him insane, like the others - had regarded his conf

d deal like him - a dete

Never heard of him. But that was J. B. Stell fast enough - I guess he can be